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Heresy

Why Spinoza?

Richard Mason on a thinker who stood at the intersection of many histories and traditions.

Why read Spinoza? He is supposed to be one of the Great Philosophers, isn’t he? Certainly, he is part of the routine syllabus, but a part which many students find easy to skip. If you face an exam on the history of philosophy covering Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley and Hume, then Spinoza may be the one to miss in reasonable safety. His connections to the rest were too controversial for tidy comparisons. He had no direct successors and no immediate influence outside a small private circle. Worse, he looks horribly difficult (and worse still, your examiner may not know much about him: risky).

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